The Orioles Warehouse

Golly gee, what have you done to me?

Bauer: “I'm extremely surprised. The move probably shouldn't shock me with what's been going on this year. I probably shouldn't put it past them.”

Bauer should not have been at all surprised by his demotion. The Orioles were carrying thirteen pitchers, which left their offense short-handed; a roster move had to be made soon to bring in another batter. Callup Dave Borkowski was supposed to make a one-and-done start in Monday's doubleheader, but his unexpectedly strong outing earned him a second look. Meanwhile, Bauer was not pitching particularly well, and he has minor-league options remaining. He had already been optioned twice earlier this year. If anyone was a ripe candidate for demotion, it was Bauer.

The second part of Bauer's comment, “I probably shouldn't put it past them,” is an apparent dig at the Oriole management's frantic and at times irrational-looking circus of moves to keep their pitching staff afloat this year. Bauer fails to see the logic in his demotion, but with the Oriole operation coming apart at the seams, why expect things to be logical?

Baby, you're no good

Bauer: “They said I'm the 13th guy, I can't pitch for this team, they didn't think I could pitch here at all and they're trying to get rid of me—to be almost word for word.”

Beattie (to MLB.com): “I didn't expect him to vent like that, but we told him he was the odd man out. We are not going to carry 13 pitchers and quite honestly, there are some guys who outpitched him. We told him, to be fair to him, instead of calling him up and sending him down again, we are going to let him pitch down there and if there's a chance to get back in the majors with another team, we will try to oblige.”

Bauer may have distorted the Orioles' words a little, but Beattie's account indicates that Bauer had the message essentially right: We don't want you here, not now, nor in the foreseeable future. Coming from the only professional organization he has ever known (Bauer was drafted by the Orioles in 1997), that had to be tough.

Based on this year's performance, though, Bauer has not been the worst pitcher on the team. That honor belongs to Mike DeJean, who is extremely fortunate to still have a job. Based on the Adjusted Runs Prevented statistic tracked in Michael Wolverton's Reliever Evaluation Tools, Bauer has been the bullpen's second-weakest link; he has allowed 9.2 more runs to score than an average reliever would have in equivalent game situations. That ranks 13th worst among major-leaguers. (DeJean, meanwhile, has been passed by Rocky Biddle for the worst ARP, but remains second worst at -17.6.) So Bauer can rest assured that he is not "the 13th guy," at least not in the context of his team. But he was quite possibly the worst reliever on the team not named Mike DeJean, and Bauer got the boot because of his junior status and because the Orioles think DeJean can still turn his season around despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

You and I travel to the beat of a different drum

Bauer: “To flat-out hear I can't pitch here, that's kind of a joke because I've done it the past two or three years. Now all of a sudden, no?”

Bauer may be giving himself too much credit. He had a decent year as a middle reliever in 2002, when his 7.5 ARP made him the third-best member of one of the league's best bullpens. Last year was a different story, as his ARP slumped to -9.6, second worst on the team.

Oddly, many of his year-end component pitching statistics improved from 2002 to 2003: his strikeout rate and strikeout-to-walk ratio rose, his home run rate dropped, and his opponents' BA/OBP/SLG all fell in 2003. But Bauer simply pitched better when it counted in '02: he allowed a .535 OPS with runners in scoring position that year, but when that figure rose to .917 in '03, it made an immense difference in the runs column. Also, his ground/fly ratio dropped precipitously from 1.67 in 2002 to 0.96 in 2003, an inauspicious trend because Bauer is defined by the sinking action on his pitches.

It doesn't matter anymore

Bauer: “I have a bad ERA, that's it.... I had one horrible outing in Chicago. Minus that, and I'm probably one of the more effective guys on the team. But I guess that doesn't really count for anything.”

Bauer may have a point about that horrible outing in Chicago, but only because it was miserable to the extreme. On May 11 against the White Sox, Bauer entered a game in which the Orioles already trailed, 7-0, and promptly allowed seven runs while retiring only one batter in what became a 15-0 loss. Another low point came June 14 against Cleveland, when he entered the game in the third inning, having had little time to warm up due to a bullpen phone malfunction. He then surrendered six runs in 1 2/3 innings of what ended as a 14-0 laugher. Those games happen to be the two worst defeats the Orioles have suffered this season.

Using some creatively reductive accounting, we can determine exactly how much those two pastings have affected Bauer's overall statistics. Before his last demotion, Bauer's 6.11 earned run average ranked second-worst among Oriole relievers, ahead of only DeJean's 6.63. Subtract Bauer's first bad outing, and his ERA plummets to 4.37. But that modification bumps him ahead of only Jason Grimsley (5.34) in the Orioles' bullpen. Take away both of Bauer's beatings, though, and his ERA falls all the way to 2.97, behind only B.J. Ryan and Eddy Rodríguez. Still, every game counts, and most relievers would experience a similar boost in their ERA (though not quite as dramatic as Bauer's) if their worst outing or outings were trimmed from their record.

Grayed-out names are not on the active roster. Statistics are current through July 7, 2004.

The (-1) and (-2) indicate ERA's that omit Bauer's worst and two worst games. This analysis confirms that ERA is a poor way to measure a reliever, because a bad outing here or there can unfairly overshadow the rest of a reliever's performance. Yet more comprehensive bullpen metrics such as ARP are too difficult to calculate for the average fan. So I'll run the numbers again using two measures that offer higher granularity than ERA, but are about as simple to compute: WHIP (Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched) and FIP ERA (Fielding-Independent Pitching ERA, defined as (13HR + 3BB - 2SO) / IP + 3.2).

Bauer's untweaked WHIP falls squarely in the middle of the Orioles' pitching staff. After subtracting his worst outing, he moves firmly into the top half, and omitting his two worst appearances places him above his bullpen peers.

Bauer's unadjusted FIP ERA is 4.30—not horrible, but lumped in with the back end of the Orioles' bullpen. With the worst performances excised from his record, though, he moves up a few places in the rankings.

It's tempting to make one's worst moments disappear from history, but the thing is, Bauer was bad enough to be torched twice in three months of work. Fortunately for the Orioles, neither outing changed the outcome of a game. But if it happened twice, it could happen again, and sooner or later a decision could hang on his performance. So while the vast majority of Bauer's appearances have been effective (two-thirds of his games have resulted in him allowing one or no runs), it is unfair to completely overlook the two ugliest dates on his statistical record.

I’ve been put down, I’ve been pushed ‘round

Bauer: “Deep down, yeah, I'm hurt. Because I busted my (tail) for this organization. So to hear that, especially getting kicked to the curb. You are washed up and you're 27.”

One would hope that the Oriole brass is not so cruel as to tell a 27-year-old that he is washed up, as that would be the worst indignity possible for a player in his supposed prime. But whatever they told him, Bauer apparently interpreted it as the most profound rejection of his talent that he has received as a professional. What happened to letting a player down easy? Something clearly went awry in the communication process. Whether Bauer or the Orioles were more in the wrong is unclear, but this is a matter that should be addressed.

Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight

Bauer: “I am going to go deal in Triple-A as I always do for the past four years. Maybe somebody will give me a shot, I don't care if it's in the bullpen, anywhere. I just want to go back to the majors.”

This comment indicates that the heaviness of his rejection has settled in, and Bauer is ready to move on with the next phase of his career: repeating his success in the minors and earning another shot in the majors. Bauer has indeed fared well against Triple-A hitters over the last four years, compiling a 3.82 ERA at that level, although his minor-league record prior to 2001 hardly signaled future success. But since he has had a small amount of success in the majors, he undoubtedly will attract interest from a few teams in the pitching-starved world of major-league baseball.

Look at this life; I still don't know where it's going

Bauer: “I have no idea how to take that. Do I take it as a guy who (stinks)? Or as a guy who's looking for an opportunity?”

Somehow, Bauer's mind cleared up enough for him to stumble upon the critical choice facing him at this juncture: whether to pout or to persevere. By this point in the interview, Bauer's thought process has run the spectrum from surprise to bitterness to frustration to determination. Now there are tinges of optimism as he begins to see a way to regain control over his situation.

Look at these dreams, so beaten and so battered

The Orioles' braintrust has struck out in their handling of Bauer—not to mention most of their other young pitchers—this year. After coming into camp as a rotation candidate, Bauer made the Opening Day roster as a long reliever, then was relegated to irregular mop-up work. On May 25 he found himself being shipped to Ottawa amid a flurry of transactions that included the premature callup of Denny Bautista. Ten days later, the Bautista experiment having failed, Bauer was back with the big-league club. Last month, following the debacle in Cleveland on the 14th, Baltimore optioned him back to the minors on the 16th, then transferred him to the major-league disabled list on the 18th after he informed the team that he had an elbow injury. He came off the DL last Friday and was a candidate to be the fill-in starter for Wednesday's game, but not even a week passed after his return before he was back on the plane to Triple-A.

Like any young player, Bauer (whose surname, incidentally, means “farmer” in German) does not enjoy being farmed out, called up, and sent back down again, and this was the third time the Orioles exercised his option this year. The problem is not so much in the Orioles' yo-yoing of Bauer, but in the graceless way they told him that his future with the club was dim. Bauer has never been a hot prospect, but he is a serviceable pitcher who had not pitched markedly worse than most of his bullpen mates this year before his latest demotion. Despite his high ERA, Bauer's WHIP and OPS allowed rates were not so different from those of Buddy Groom or John Parrish and compared favorably to those of Grimsley and the apparently invincible DeJean.

With his sinking fastball in the low 90's, Bauer has the stuff to be a groundball specialist. His command has deserted him at times, but it's conceivable that he could eventually pull off a few decent seasons out of the 'pen like the ones DeJean put up leading up to his arrival in Baltimore. But it looks like Bauer and the Orioles have reached a point of no return. Mazzilli has since said that Bauer would be welcomed back, and the Sidney Ponson saga proves that one can never say never, but it's just a sad story for all concerned, and a black mark on what has become a chaotic season for the Birds' management.

Update: The situation has been officially deflated. According to today's Sun, Bauer admitted to distorting the Orioles' words a bit in his comments to reporters on Wednesday. He contacted Beattie Friday to clarify the matter and mend their relationship. Since Bauer has apparently taken most of the blame for the episode, I was probably a little harsh on the Orioles' management in my article. Most of what I wrote about Bauer is still valid, though.